Simon Guilfoyle
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Recent Posts
- Where Are The Stick People?
- The Professionals
- Chain Reaction
- Freeze Frame
- Short Circuit
- Maths Class
- Detox
- Comfort Blanket
- The Wrong Conversation
- Avoidable Harm
- A Tale of Two Kings
- Stick Child and The Fraggles
- Top of the Table
- It’s Criminal
- Find The Treasure
- The Real Thing
- Stick Child’s Kitchen Nightmares
- Method in the Madness?
- Leadership is Not Enough
- A Better Way
- Nonsense
- Face the Facts
- Three Different Things
- DO NOT USE!
- Why Binary Comparisons are Really Silly
- Weak Excuses for Using Binary Comparisons
- Get Help Now!
- Incontrovertible Evidence
- The Weather Man
- Stick Child’s Guessing Game
- Straight Lines
- Stick Child Tries to Buy Milk
- Stick Child’s Guide to Systems Thinking
- Stick Child’s School Project
- Stick Child and the Flat Tyre
- Understanding Targets (For the Under 10s)
- Why ‘Year-To-Date’ is Rubbish
- The Tunnel
- The Railway Children
- Angry Driver
- Take The Targets Test!
- How To Win Any Argument
- My Trip to America – A Systems Thinker’s Diary
- Right Measures, Measured Right
- ‘Tis Not The Season…
- Silos
- The People vs The System
- The Six Greatest Myths of All Time
- How To Spoil A Perfectly Good Car
- What’s Your Poison?
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Tag Archives: data
Why ‘Year-To-Date’ is Rubbish
‘Year-to-date’ figures are often used in performance frameworks, both in the public and private sectors. In policing, ‘year-to-date’ figures are regularly used to track the number of reported crimes at any given point in the year, supposedly as an indicator of whether the police … Continue reading
Panic!
There’s… “Panic on the streets of London! Panic on the streets of Birmingham!” So says the song of the same title by UK band The Smiths, anyway. The true story that follows (yes, I’ve caved in to popular demand and … Continue reading
The Bells! The Bells!
“About half of everything is below average”. When you think about that, it’s pretty obvious isn’t it? Well keep that thought in mind as we explore a widely misapplied and misunderstood tool of performance management – The Bell Curve. Without … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged bell curve, charts, command and control, data, management, performance management, systems thinking, variety
12 Comments
Spot The Difference
Sometimes when I say this… …people hear this: Not being able to differentiate between targets, measures and priorities is a deadly obstacle to effective performance. Let me explain why… Targets First of all, if you’ve ever met me, heard me … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged assumptions, binary comparisons, control charts, data, deming, management, measures, performance management, police, priorities, purpose, systems, systems thinking, targets
31 Comments
Poo-Pooing Performance Indicators
At the beginning of the ‘Bad Performance Measurement On Tour’ series I issued a call-to-arms for eagle-eyed readers, asking them to send me their examples of bad performance measurement. Twitter user @Wiggies13 responded to this rallying cry and sent me the … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged charts, data, deming, operational definition, performance measurement, policy, systems thinking, targets
8 Comments
(Not So) Bad Performance Measurement On Tour (#3)
‘Data have no meaning apart from their context’. – Donald Wheeler Cast your mind back to Episode One of this series. No beer, no food, no chillies; just trains. The examples provided in that blog post highlighted the dire (but … Continue reading
Bad Performance Measurement on Tour (#1)
A friend at work told me that whilst giving blood recently, he noticed there were performance indicators on a nearby board showing the number of blood donations, in the dreaded ‘this week vs last week’ format. Nothing’s sacred, is it? Anyway, this … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged binary comparisons, control charts, data, deming, management, performance measurement, systems, systems thinking, targets, variation
8 Comments
How To Lose Weight With Systems Thinking
One of the key tenets of systems thinking is understanding variation. Deming said: “Life is variation. Variation there will always be, between people, in output, in service, in product”. This applies to weight loss as much as everything else. People … Continue reading
Posted in Systems thinking
Tagged binary comparisons, control chart, data, performance, spc, systems, systems thinking, variation
24 Comments
Stay Calm And Don’t Knee-Jerk.
At school my least favourite subject was maths. I could never quite understand the point of learning how to calculate the volume of a traffic cone or surface area of a football. Fast forward a few years to my early … Continue reading
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